Vic Socotra

12 January 2009

Heroes

(Paula Lloyd, Hero)

I had a story in the can for this morning. It was a titanic story, two days in the making, full of sound and fury and signifying precisely nothing. It was a humorous account of outsourcing and the triumph of the flat-pack marketing scheme that IKEA developed and which has been perfected by the capitalist Chinese Communists.

I was going to go like this, in the context of the pandemonium that is building in Washington. I happened to be downtown twice over the weekend- miscalculations in timing since the inauguration is coming, ready or not, and streets are closed all around the Hay-Adams hotel where the President-Elect and his family are residing, and huge viewing stands are being erected and gigantic PA systems are being tested. One loud noise sounded like the call to prayer, which I know is impossible, and may have had something to do with dozens of protestors waving signs about Gaza.

The Convention Center was overrun by volunteers in training to serve in the dozens of events and venues next week.

It was all because I had to be out of the house- it was too nerve-wracking to watch Captain Middleton erect the media center in the living room of Tunnel 8, my humble abode on the Fourth Floor of Big Pink. It is way too big, but considering the amount of money that has evaporated in the street value of #405, I am stuck here at least until I can pay down the mortgage about sixty thousand dollars.

Ugh. So I have decided to throw myself into the place and make it a gem, someplace I don't mind being since I can't be anywhere else. I found a fabulous deal on a large media cabinet over the holidays- less than half-price- but I neglected to kick myself, since it is almost the same size as the cabinet for the queen-sized mattress downstairs.

I had not learned my lesson from the Murphy Bed experience in the efficiency apartment. The media center arrived in seven or eight long VERY heavy boxes the shape of caskets and took a couple months of weekends to put together. There was a lot of pride in the ultimate product, but I have to tell you that the brain does not retain pain.

The media center arrived the same way the Murphy Bed did. I panicked and called the Captain, a ship's chandler who is on the beach this season with the down-turn in the yachting trade. He is reduced to performing handyman's work, and I and paid him an hourly rate to put it together for me.

Anyway, I know it is cheating, much like a Dad hiring someone to assemble the kid's bikes on Christmas Eve, and I was back in the office pounding on something or other when I got a note from the Doctor.

There was a problem in the program, and a hero was dead.

I stopped what I was doing and gazed blankly at the screen. This is not the sort of hero we normally honor in time of war. This is the third social scientist attached to the Army who has been killed in the line of duty.

I have been a supporter of this approach since 2002 as part of a comprehensive Information Operations campaign in the Global War on Terror- though my ability to influence things ended in 2003 when I left the government. It just seemed right that we should provide our soldiers with information about the people with whom they were expected to operate, and not figure out the “hearts and minds” aspect of armed conflict on the fly.

The only people who can do that are the ones who have learned the nuance of other cultures- their histories, narratives and folkways. We have made many mistakes in our adventures in the Middle East, some of which play into stereotypes that date back to the Crusades. There had to be a way to reduce the violence that was not necessary to accomplishing the mission. Anthropologists and socialists were the best bet to understand and interpret the cultures on the ground, not just the languages.

The entire program is of course under intense fire from the academic left, which maintains that the program is designed not to resolve conflict on terms short of lethality, but to more effectively target the enemy.

I am OK with that- it seems infinitely preferable that the correct people die- but there are those who are trapped in a sort of cultural relativity that will only be fully resolved when someone gets around to conquering their home villages and putting them to the sword.

Three social scientists have been killed performing the missions, two of them last year and one just last week.

Paula Lloyd is the third martyr to the notion that we should understand those that we fight. She died last week from burns suffered when an Afghan villager tossed gasoline on her and set her afire. She was badly burned, and evacuated to Germany. She fought her wounds gallantly, but they were too extensive and too severe. She passed away in an Army hospital in Germany last week.

Previously, Oxford-trained doctoral candidate Michael Bhatia was killed in an IED attack in Afghanistan. In Iraq, Nicole Suveges died in a bombing of the City District Council Building in Sadr City, the stronghold of the Shiite extremist Muktadr al-Sadr.

Nicole and eleven others died instantly.

All three made a difference. To do their work, they spent more time outside the wire of the forward operating bases than most soldiers. They saved the lives of the people with whom they served, and they saved Afghan and Iraqi lives by tempering and channeling the lethality of the military machine.

They are clearly a threat to the bad guys, and they are on the bleeding edge of the front lines. By any criteria, there are heroes, and though not soldiers, their supreme sacrifice ought to be recognized.

In the other room, Captain Middleton was banging on the media center. I sat, looking at the screen, and felt awed by those who go out there to the edge of the world to do our business. And particularly those who do not come home again, to simple comforts we take for granted.

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